Truthmarket Challenge Demonstrates Everything That Is Wrong With the Global Warming Debate

This week, Ellen Davis posted what she probably believes is a $5,000 dagger at the throat of climate change skeptics. On a site called Truthmarket, she offered a $5,000 bounty for anyone who could:

Provide verifiable evidence that significantly less than 95% of American scientists believe in the reality of Global Climate Change and that humans are a likely cause.

Ms. Davis’s flourish (and associated PR campaign) is an absolutely perfect example of how the climate debate is broken. Why? Because she has offered a statement that not only most scientists, but most skeptics would agree with! How is that possible? Because this has been the central tactic of strong advocates of anthropogenic global warming theory for years: bait and switch. When skeptics criticize one issue, they respond by defending another.